


i fall to pieces

by dazaicat



Series: blue [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: (everyone thinks He Ded), Angst with a Happy Ending, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, blah blah angst happens n he collapses on otabek, context from 'cherries and wine' (kinda necessary):, except now....he Not Ded, happy-ish??, hides it from everyone when he starts coughing up blue petals, lapslock, thank, yura falls in one-sided love w otabek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-14 22:25:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11792733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dazaicat/pseuds/dazaicat
Summary: for the shortest moment, all he can feel is betrayal sliding like a knife under his ribs — then it’s waves, and waves, of crashing guilt pulling him further out to sea.he’s done this, he knows.he must have done this. yura wouldn’t do this to himself.





	i fall to pieces

**Author's Note:**

> title also from [cherry](https://genius.com/Lana-del-rey-cherry-lyrics)
> 
> sequel to [cherries and wine](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11790303): this is the one in which they finally get their happy ending, or as happy as it gets.
> 
> please heed tags!! if hospitals or blood make you uncomfortable, please be aware that there are mentions of both

the point of intersection: 4:27pm.

_for the shortest moment, all he can feel is betrayal sliding like a knife under his ribs — then it’s waves, and waves, of crashing guilt pulling him further out to sea._

_he’s done this, he knows._

_he must have done this. yura wouldn’t do this to himself._

__

xxxxxx

when he sees the blue shimmer on yura’s lips, slick with blood and spit, he doesn’t understand at first. he doesn’t understand the kiss. he doesn’t understand the sudden accusation, he doesn’t understand yura’s lips against his own, he doesn’t understand the resigned dull look in the eyes of someone he’s always seen as — _a soldier_ — someone who would be the last person to look resigned to something as trivial as fate.

this was yuri plisetsky; he never fell, but if he did, otabek would bet anything he wouldn't just sit there and take it.

he doesn’t understand, not at first, until yura’s fingers latch onto the front of his shirt and a single whisper leaves his lips before his eyes slide shut and don’t open and he slumps into otabek’s arms like it took him every last bit of energy and breath to form a single word.

that word: _otabek_ , and suddenly otabek understands everything at once.

xxxxxx

they don’t tell him how they found the two of them.

he overhears, anyway.

he listens with detached interest as they recount how he chanted yura’s name with increasing desperation, how he clung on tight enough they could barely get yura on a stretcher, how he threw a fit when they said only family was allowed to be in the ambulance by yura’s side.

it sounds like someone else did all those things.

the rush of the guilt-sea drowns out the gossip; he floats.

xxxxxx

they understand less than he did, he thinks.

they don’t know much about diseases like these; they speculate, bring in field experts, form theories on the fly.

yura lies in a hospital bed with monitors hooked up on both sides and needles slid into his pale wrists.

they discuss surgery, they discuss possible ways to influence yura’s brain in the coma he’s in. they discuss life insurance and chances of survival in terms of tenths of a percentage and weeks and otabek’s mind beats itself against the jagged rocks of his mental shores over and over to the rhyhtm of yura’s heart rate monitor: _you did this, you did this, you did this._

that’s the one thing he understands and they don’t, the one thing they refuse to acknowledge even as they discuss how much money yura’s death is worth according to the insurance policy. _he did this_ , he didn’t notice his best friend wasting away until it was too late, failed to be a good friend, failed to love him, failed to save his life.

xxxxxx

they pat his shoulder in sympathy until he shrugs their hands off and they don’t touch him again. he sees one therapist; two; they all say the same things and none of them can answer to satisfaction why it doesn’t count as _love_ if he feels so fucking _much_ all at once that it’s all he can do to surface for gasping breaths as his feelings threaten to overwhelm him.

yura, in a hotel bed, strangled from within by his unrequited love; otabek, by his bedside, drowning in his own pressing in and wondering how he managed to fail so badly even _this_ is not enough.

xxxxxx

he doesn’t dream. you don’t sleep while drowning, either.

otabek instead holds yura’s hand like a lifeline.

he doesn’t know which one of them needs it more.

xxxxxx

he’s surprised they let him, actually, for that long. he sees the looks they give them; there’s nothing besides sympathy and a scientific kind of curiosity, a -- _maybe it’ll work like this??_

he hates that the most. hates that to them, it’s an experimental observation, while to him: it’s everything.

he doesn’t argue, though. he’s too tired, and doesn’t want to leave.

xxxxxx

how much more can yura feel, that this doesn’t count as feelings returned? unfair question. otabek didn’t taste any salt until he started crying that one time; he has no right to wonder what yura must be going through, not with his freshwater grief.

xxxxxx

at some point, they pry him gently away from yura’s bedside. he’s too tired to fight them, too. yura’s not doing any worse or any better, seemingly in a limbo state — but otabek has seen the scans, and he knows that life support can only do so much for so long.

he also knows he’s only allowed to know all these things because he is the direct cause. that’s the justification. no more; no less. they tell him to go home.

he goes.

xxxxxx

he’s in no shape to skate. no one expects him to. no one really expects much from otabek, and he wants to sleep,so he chases warm beer with more warm beer and more warm beer until it tastes salty running down his chin. he keeps his phone by his beside at full notification volume. he sleeps as far as you can call sleeping at the bottom of a cheap beer bottle _sleep_. it’s quiet.

he does it again the next night, and the next, and his phone never rings.

xxxxxx

he fights with mila.

she’s wide-eyed and thin lipped and he can’t tell if her shoulders are shaking because she’s so furious or because she’s about to cry, and she tells him he’s an _idiot, idiot,_ and otabek secretly agrees with every single word until her expression wavers and her lips quiver and she’s crying for real.

except then she says the opposite of what he was thinking: she says _don’t you dare blame yourself_ which he undercuts with a pained _he **loved** me_ — and she stabs through with a _you didn’t have any more choice in this than he did._

he doesn’t realize he’s shouting until she falls silent and his own words hang in the air like the jagged edges of a bone snapped messily in half.

he doesn’t realize he’s crying until she brings him into a too-tight hug and his wet eyelashes press into her equally wet cheek.

xxxxxx

he realizes there’s no use getting angry while at sea — shouting won’t help you drown any less — and instead lets it pull him under.

xxxxxx

in other words: he makes the same mistake that yura did.

yura: took a leap of faith he should have avoided, went with the flow and trusted it wouldn’t take him anywhere he couldn’t handle.

otabek: didn’t swim against the current when he had the chance.

xxxxxx

the current, predictably, takes him roughly in the same direction.

he licks white petals, long, red-tipped, out of his mouth and relishes the sweet-sharp burn in his own lungs as his due. it feels almost cathartic. there’s nothing about it he doesn’t feel he deserves, nothing he would fight against.

in a way, it lends a sweet finality to the whole thing. it’s acknowledgement; he knows he loves, and now he has the evidence spattered all over his sink. like he could ever have doubted it before, anyway. it may taken him this long to realize, this long to accept, but his lungs work and his heart beats to the same rhythm he feels when he rests his thumb on yura’s wrist.

and there is only one way his feelings could suddenly be unrequited — yura’s _dying_ , and so is everything he feels for otabek alongside him.

it’s very fitting. let yura take otabek’s breath with him; not like he’d know how to breathe on his own without yura there, anyway.

xxxxxx

he stops drinking. keeps his phone by his bedside. makes a series of stupid decisions in which he hides the petals from everyone, just like yura had. what can they do?

xxxxxx

nothing.

xxxxxx

the phone rings. otabek gently spits out a glob of crimson-tipped white onto his pillow before he takes the call.

it’s the hospital, and for the entire duration of the neutrally polite voice talking at him, otabek wonders if he is so far out of it that he’s become completely detached from reality, untethered, unmoored.

his voice is weak and hoarse when he asks again. asks, almost afraid of the answer. they say, again: _yes_ , mr altin. mr plisetsky’s condition has been suddenly and drastically improving. _no_ , he’s not yet conscious, but the mass of petals blocking his airways is dying, expelled from his body, and otabek can only think — _what does this mean? will he get to live? will i? is he coughing up the last remainder of my lifespan, or his own?_ he hangs up and calls a cab instead.

a cab would bring him answers faster.

xxxxxx

it’s not a pretty picture, by any means, just how much blood and blue yura can hack up. but he does, violently. over and over and over and otabek wonders how someone can even survive this, but yura’s survived worse.

maybe this time yura will be fine.

xxxxxx

when otabek starts doing the same, except with less blue and more white, his body seizes and relaxes to the same beat yura’s blood is pulsing to.

and yura’s pulse is getting stronger; his condition is improving so fast that the field experts can barely keep up with their theorizing. otabek’s lungs are lighter, but he thinks it has a lot more to do with the slowly lifting fear than with anything physical.

he hopes. lets himself hope.

xxxxxx

yura comes to about a week after the final surgery is complete. they’ve had to remove some of the dead petals that couldn’t make it out on their own before they started to rot, and otabek would be disgusted by the idea if it wasn’t _yura_ and if he hadn’t seen enough of yura’s blood to last him several lifetimes.

the first person he looks for, naturally, is otabek.

he says the name in the same shaky whisper he did before. this time, otabek actually gets to reply.

 _i’m here_ , he says, and he can’t help how even his own tired voice is drenched in helpless warmth. _don’t strain yourself. take it easy on your lungs. i’m here, yura._

yura lets out some kind of sob at that and drags otabek towards him with surprising strength, hand around the wrist of the hand otabek was resting gently against his face. otabek is careful of his bandages as much as yura is insistent. together, they somehow make it work enough for yura to lie on his side and trace aimless fingers all over otabek’s face, like looking alone isn’t enough.

otabek understands the sentiment. he’d be doing the same, if his own hands weren’t wound around yura holding on for dear life.

yura’s hands pause at a bandage at otabek’s throat and he frowns, gently. _i’m okay_ , otabek whispers into the air between them. it’s not a misdirection; merely a deferral. they can discuss it another time. _i’m okay now_. yura nods, accepting the adjourned conversation, and runs gentle thumbs along otabek’s collarbones.

otabek brings his own hands up to mirror yura’s, and then rests a thumb on yura’s lips with all the symbolic weight of what he is about to say. his eyes, he hopes, are serious enough. _i love you_ , he says, in the most steady and sure breath he’s taken in his life.

yura accepts that too. he keeps his eyes on otabek’s, calm, open, as otabek recounts in a low whisper every single thing about yura he’s loved and come to love and will be loving for as long as he knows, and he doesn’t once interrupt. when otabek is done, yura presses a gentle kiss against the thumb still against his mouth, and then moves on to otabek’s nose, the bridge of it, his cheeks, his forehead, slow and gentle and thorough.

somehow, any resentment or anger there could possibly have been has cleared out along with the petals; the worst that remains is a shuddering, open emptiness, ready to be filled. the warm and lazy affection does just that when otabek curls a hand around yura’s hip and tucks him under his chin with a hand on his back rubbing circles into his shoulderblades. yura lets himself be held. lets otabek curl around him, lets their breaths smooth into a steady synchronized in-out, lets himself nod off in otabek’s arms.

the guilt-sea with its cold salt waves has subsided; it’s gentle, warm freshwater lapping at the shores of otabek’s consciousness. it cleanses as much as it soothes. he thinks he can handle this. their lips had only brushed together once, more of an afterthought than anything. they have time.

they have all the time in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> aaa im bad at happy endings, but you ask and i deliver!! thank u for the lovely feedback, tho it was mostly on [tumblr](www.wingtae.tk)  
> (why didnt i jus add this as a second chapter?? good qn, i was too lazy to retag that fic n 1414 words was too nice a number to ruin)


End file.
